A corruption scandal and “a case of nepotism, no stranger to tourism,” unfolds in Brazil. The essence of the scandal is that the 65-year-old mayor of Lovelas married a 16-year-old local beauty queen and immediately appointed his new mother-in-law as the Minister of Tourism (this is the new mother-in-law, because before that Lovelas was already married 6 times).
According to the Brazilian press, it is about the 65-year-old mayor of Aracauria in the state of Paraná, Hissam Hussein Dehaini, who married Cauana Roda on April 15, four days after she turned 16.
It was already the sixth marriage of the mayor, but the essence of the scandal is not in this – the outraged public “revealed” that a few days before the ceremony, the mayor appointed the mother of his last bride, Marilene Rode, as the minister of culture and tourism of the city – with a salary of 28 thousand Brazilian reals – or 3.8 thousand euros.
After the scandal erupted and the Paraná State Prosecutor’s Office announced that it was investigating whether the mayor used his influence as a public official to hire family members for public positions, Marilen Rohde was removed from office. But what is interesting, the city authorities stood up for the mayor’s mother-in-law, assuring that “this maid meets the necessary conditions for holding the position, as she has 26 years of experience in public service.” Moreover, a few years before that, the future mother-in-law worked as an executive assistant to the mayor, and then she was appointed director of the Education Department of Arakauria, but no one cared.
The process also revealed that Hissam Hussein Dehaini himself had already been accused of “smearing” his relatives into government positions in 2019 — when he appointed several family members, including his then-wife and two daughters, to positions in the city government. However, then he was found not guilty. Another scandal involving the mayor is even more high-profile — in November 2000, he was detained as part of a drug-trafficking investigation — accused of protecting drug dealers and bribing police officers for protection. However, he was not convicted.